


the face that pins you with its double gaze

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e05 Bloody Mary, Incest, M/M, Secrets, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:23:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the aftermath of "Bloody Mary."  Title taken from Diane Ackerman:  <i>Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the face that pins you with its double gaze

Dean drives into the darkness, nothing but black sky in the rearview. He wants to get as far from Toledo as he can on this tank of gas. He wants an El Sol and a bed with a decent mattress and a thirty minute shower in scalding water. Mostly he wants Sam to sleep.

Sam’s eyes are closed, but he’s awake. His face is pinched, drawn, and Dean thinks he sees a fleck of dried blood on his cheek. Dean grips the wheel until it burns his palm, wills his fingers to stay where they belong instead of sliding down his brother’s cheekbone. 

Sam’s keeping something from him, some guilty little secret that made his eyes bleed, and Dean knows this is nothing new. Sam’s been keeping secrets since he was old enough to keep his mouth shut. Dean’s the one who has changed, the one who can’t keep up, the one who’s out of the loop.

“You plan to drive all night?” Sam says, his eyes still closed.

“Maybe.”

Sam snorts and stretches his long ass legs into the footwell as far as they’ll go, and then he really does fall asleep, the muscles in his face relaxing, his jaw gone slack and his hands curled loosely at his sides. Dean keeps driving. He’s not tired.

 

@@@

“Eat your vegetables, Sammy.” Dean pushes the bowl across the booth.

“Salsa is not a vegetable,” Sam says, but he loads up a few chips and eats them anyway. 

Two tables over, a couple is celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They are both shriveled, decrepit people, but their children and grandchildren are bellied up to the party three deep and every time the old woman laughs, the old man smiles and pats her hand. Dean wishes he hadn’t had a craving for Mexican. 

Sam seems not to notice. “What do you think about this one?” he says, tapping his finger on the front page of the local paper.

Dean squints and tosses back the rest of his beer. “I think we deserve a little break. That’s what I think.”

Sam tenses. He takes a deep breath like he’s ready to argue and then lets it all out. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.” Behind him, the old lady unwraps diamond studs and fastens them in her ears with shaking hands.

@@@

Dean feels that restless itch roll over him after a couple days, that need to move, that need to get away before too many people remember his face and the way he walks and the clothes he wears. He shrugs it off like everything else. 

Sam bakes by the pool for hours. He comes back to the room smelling of coconut and chlorine, his hands smeared with ink from trashy magazines. The heat radiates off his skin when Sam brushes against Dean in the diner, when they share the sink to floss their teeth, when they pile into the same bed to watch TV. 

Sam laughs at Zac Braff pratfalling off the roof of the hospital—guess who threw scissors again—and Dean can almost imagine that the last four years never happened, that Sammy never watched his girlfriend burn. Sam, Dean reminds himself; not Sammy, not the same baby brother Dean remembers. This Sam takes up a hell of a lot more space than he used to.

At the commercial break, Sam mutes the TV and turns to Dean, some expression on his face that Dean doesn’t yet know. “What’s your secret, Dean?” he says. “Who’s your skeleton in the closet?” Dean throws his legs over the side of the bed but Sam grabs his arm, holds him there. “Wait. Let me guess.” Sam pulls Dean in tight, and he looks angrier than Dean has seen him in awhile. “Carolyn Pierce, Lorraine Norton, Billy Price. Am I getting warm?”

People Dean couldn’t save in chronological fucking order. Yeah, he’s getting warm.

Sam crowds even closer. “See, Dean, you don’t get to tell me that Jessica’s death isn’t my fault and then carry around that kind of guilt.” His breath is wet on Dean’s cheek. Sam lets Dean go and he goes.

@@@

“Dad,” Dean says. “We could really use some help about now.” He doesn’t say, _Pick up the goddamn phone, you son of a bitch_ or _I think Sam’s broken and I can’t fix him_. “Call me. Please.”

@@@

 

“I was having a nightmare, I guess,” Sam says and flicks on the lamp. He looks like death warmed over. Dean doesn’t think Sam’s had an uninterrupted night of sleep since before Constance Welch kicked the bucket for good.

Dean rolls his eyes and sits up. “You guess.” There are forty three cracks in the ceiling above Dean’s bed and six water stains; he counted them by the street light filtering through the threadbare curtains while Sam thrashed in his sheets. “And here I thought it was sugarplum fairies.”

Sam doesn’t say anything.

“For the love of god, Sammy.” Dean throws off the covers and stands between their beds. Sam just looks at him. “Scoot over, bitch.” Sam scoots.

Sam finally falls asleep—his arm flung out over Dean’s chest, his cold toes dug under Dean’s shins—and Dean listens all night to the sound of Sam’s deep and even breathing.

@@@

 

From underwater, the world is bright and distorted. Sam’s legs seem disjointed from his torso. Each of his leg hairs is coated in bubbles. Sam reaches down and yanks Dean topside by his trunks.

“Oh, it’s on,” Dean says through a mouthful of water and when they’re done, his arms are sore and a bruise in the shape of Sam’s foot is purpling up on his ribs. In their bathroom later, Dean presses his fingers into that deep ache and smiles.

“Your pick,” Sam calls and Dean tugs on a pair of boxers.

They watch _Gremlins_ for what is possibly the millionth time, pressed hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder, Sam’s wide palm splayed across Dean’s thigh like old times. Dean leans in until he’s got nowhere else to go.

Kissing Sam is like breathing. Sam trembles underneath Dean’s hands, and this is the Sammy Dean remembers—the Sam who holds on for dear life, the Sam whose teeth are sharp on Dean’s neck, the Sam who makes those soft noises in the back of his throat when Dean touches him.

“Don’t stop,” Sam says and Dean doesn’t. He bites across Sam’s stomach, licks his way down Sam’s hips, swallows Sam’s cock down until Sam bucks into his mouth. Dean lips at Sam’s softening cock as Sam writhes beneath him, his hands fisted in the sheets. Then Dean flips him over and twists his tongue into Sam’s ass, over and over again, until Sam is hard again and begging. 

Dean fucks his brother slowly, with care, as if Sam might shatter. 

“Come on, jerk,” Sam says, breath hitching. “Do it like you mean it.”

Dean snaps his hips and reaches around and Sam shuts up. Dean’s orgasm takes him by surprise—everything irising down to Sam’s sweat-slicked shoulder underneath his cheek, the sweet clench of Sam’s ass around his dick. Afterwards, they flop on their backs, the sheets kicked down around their ankles, and watch the shadows crawl across the ceiling.

“I can’t tell you,” Sam says eventually. “I just can’t.”

“I know,” Dean says, and he holds Sam’s hand in the dark until he can’t feel his fingers anymore and still he doesn’t let go.


End file.
